When Michael Calls
John Farris | Pocket Books | 1975 (first published 1967) | 249 pages

“Auntie Helen…. I’m dead, aren’t I?”

Helen Connelly is plagued by a series of unsettling phone calls, which threaten to tear apart the quiet small-town life she shares with her young daughter, Peggy. The caller, a boy about ten years old, claims to be Helen’s deceased nephew, Michael, who tragically froze to death sixteen years previously after running away from home during a blizzard. 

The boy on the phone pleads with Helen for help, resurrecting the family’s tragic history and reopening the barely-healed wounds of her own personal guilt. Michael died under Helen’s care, after she took charge of him and his older brother, Craig, following the death of her sister in a mental institution. The telephone calls reawaken Helen’s grief over his death, and the remorse in her own role in committing her sister.

The early chapters tap into the supernatural dread of a disembodied voice on the line, a crackling connection filled with recriminations against Helen. The eerie atmosphere intensifies when Peggy claims to have seen Michael in the playground at school, bringing the specter of Helen’s dead nephew threateningly close. However, after an odd death—by hundreds of bee stings—the focus transforms from ghost story to murder mystery. 

Sheriff Hap Washbrook recruits the assistance of Doremus, a retired homicide detective from Chicago. Although the phone calls, and occasional apparitions of a young boy, continue, the perspective gradually shifts from Helen to Doremus. The detective ultimately posits that Michael may still somehow be alive, returned to exact revenge on those he feels responsible for the death of his mother.

The small-town Ozarks setting is evocative for the story, which builds up a psychological crime story upon its paranormal foundations. The resolution and reveal of the culprit comes a bit early, however, leaving a final stretch overly reliant on action. This premature denouement also echoes the epilogue of Hitchcock’s Psycho, with its too-tidy explanation of mental illness and criminal behavior. The story delivers a few creepy moments and a brisk pace, but feels shallow, even though touching upon some heavy emotional themes.

There is also a curiously latent romantic subplot, initially spinning out from the male characters contemplating their prospective chances with Helen. It resolves itself with an odd coda featuring Doremus and his new bride on their honeymoon in Jamaica. The effect makes the entire book wrongly feel like a first installment of the Doremus Mysteries.